It might even be melamine in their bee food (yes, commercial bee keepers do make bee food) because the recipes call for soy protein or flour (?) and that is on the FDA’s watch list of food from China.

Stress is one of many of the things being looked at. A 70% loss of commercial bees in the east coast of the U.S. should be a red alert to all of us. It is in Taiwan, Egypt, and Europe as well.

I’m also not sure the North American commercial beekeeping standard operating procedures translate worldwide, and there have certainly been enough cases outside of North America to make me very, very skeptical of what she has to say. I think this is a bigger, deeper problem than she seems to figure (for one thing, the CCD bees showed low to normal infestations by varroa mites, but multiple fungal and bacterial coinfections), and I don’t imagine there is a magic bullet answer.

In short, I’m skeptical of these uncredentialed types who pop up every now and again claiming they have all the answers, or the answer, because they’re usually wrong.

Here’s a link

Seriously, though, it’s probably not a good idea to trash-talk the bees, as one of my posts this evening will make clear.

Maybe China will pick up the slack.